This invention relates to apparatus for installing inserts. In particular, it relates to tool apparatus arranged to pick up, heat, and install a metallic insert into thermoplastic material.
In the field of telephony, thermoplastic material is used in a veriety of ways to manufacture telephone switching and station equipment items that provide telecommunication service. Sometimes these telephone items require repairs to be made so that they may continue to serve their intended use. Maintenance personnel, especially in servicing telephone switching equipment, find it highly desirable to install metallic inserts in thermoplastic material to repair and restore telephone switching equipment to telecommunication service. Thus, it would be useful to have apparatus arranged to install metal inserts into thermoplastic material to assemble and repair items made of thermoplastic material.
Apparatus designed to install metallic inserts into thermoplastic workpieces have been priorly disclosed in the art. For example, one such type of apparatus is arranged to receive a succession of metallic inserts that are continuously fed from a vibratory bowl feeder into the channel of a heated shoe of the apparatus. Each metallic insert is heated to the appropriate temperature by passing through the channel of the thermal shoe and the temperature of the metallic insert is maintained as it advances toward the thermoplastic workpiece. A catch member of the apparatus subsequently releases each insert into the path of a hydraulically controlled mandrel that forces the released insert through a tapered collet into engagement with the workpiece. The heated shoe conveys heat to both the hydraulical mandrel and the collet to maintain the temperature of the metallic insert.
The prior art apparatus is relatively cumbersome, expensive, and is primarily intended for the repetitive insertion of metallic inserts into thermoplastic material that is sometimes required for the assembly line manufacture of thermoplastic items. A need exists in the art for small portable inexpensive apparatus arranged for use in heating and inserting metallic inserts into thermoplastic material. A need also exists for tool apparatus arranged for use with a simple and inexpensive heating device to enable repair and maintenance personnel to affect repairs and assembly of items by inserting metallic inserts into thermoplastic material.